After Bill Paxton died in 2017, Spotter Network choreographed 200 storm chasers to spell out "BP" with their GPS tracker blips on a radar display to honor him. This kind of tribute had only been done five times before, and it was the first time it had been done for someone who wasn't a storm chaser.
With a very loud and bass-heavy surround channel, this film was notorious for destroying surround speakers in theatres worldwide.
A recording of a camel's moan was slowed down and used as the sound of the tornado.
Filming in Oklahoma was briefly delayed due to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Many of the crew went to the site to help with recovery efforts.
The production bought eight blocks of houses in the old downtown area of the real town of Wakita, Oklahoma, for $7,000 to $10,000 per house. These houses and an additional 30 homes built by the production were subsequently demolished by the film's crew for the scenes after the twister passes. The town later rebuilt the downtown area, and also kept the new fire truck used in the film.
A jet engine from a Boeing 707 was used to generate wind in some scenes.
This was the first movie released on DVD, and the last released on HD-DVD.
In a public Q&A at a screening of the film, Bill Paxton said he didn't meet executive producer Steven Spielberg until a year and a half after finishing the movie. He said Spielberg greeted him with, "Thanks for making me a lot of money."
(at around 42 mins) According to the book on the making of the movie, the CGI cow picked up by the twister sisters was originally a CGI zebra from Jumanji (1995).
It was Steven Spielberg's idea to kill off the father in the opening scene. Originally he would have survived but it was decided his death would establish how dangerous tornadoes can be and the reason for Jo's obsession with them later in life.
According to urban legend, a tornado hit a drive-in theater in Stoney Creek, Ontario, while this movie was playing. In reality, a tornado hit a drive-in theater in Thorold, Ontario, on May 20, 1996, damaging a screen. The movie was not playing when the tornado hit, but it was scheduled to play that evening.
(at around 53 mins) After the team leaves Wakita, there is a seemingly impossible helicopter shot in which the camera descends several hundred feet in a matter of seconds, ending up mere feet from Jonas's convoy. This was achieved by having the cars drive slower than usual and then speeding up the film.
The explosion of the oil tanker was originally mistimed and was not caught on film. De Bont decided not to tell the studio immediately and the stunt was reset and filmed again, costing a rumoured $500,000.
Days with sunshine posed a problem because they did not make the background skies look suitably stormy. In order to fix this and prevent delays, several scenes such as the truck cab sequences had to be flooded with high-intensity klieg lights for better contrast. As a result, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton suffered minor retinal burns through much of the filming.
The town of Wakita (Aunt Meg's town) created the Twister Museum to celebrate and pay tribute to the movie, with memorabilia including photos, movie posters and a replica of a Dorothy machine.
Michael Crichton and his wife Anne-Marie Martin were paid $2 million for their script, which at the time made it the single most expensive screenplay ever purchased.
Helen Hunt was injured while filming the scene where the truck drives through the corn, when the door was forced back into her head. For later shots, the door was wedged open.
(at around 58 mins) Jan de Bont said he regretted thinking of the hail sequence because it took so long to do and was very difficult. Also the crew couldn't find ice blocks big enough in Oklahoma for the hail making machine. They ended up having to find them in other states and some were obtained from the Burlington Ice Company in Burlington, Iowa. The ice blocks were made special by pouring milk in with the water, so the hail would show up better on film.
The instrument package used in the movie, "Dorothy", is an homage to the instrument pack real tornado researchers attempt to place in the paths of tornadoes, the "TOtable Tornado Observatory" (or T.O.T.O.). Dorothy and Toto are both characters from The Wizard of Oz (1939) who are also sucked up by a giant tornado.
Trailers contain a shot not in the film: a truck tire hurtling towards the viewer. This was supposedly one of the test shots that was created during pre-production to prove that CGI was capable of executing the effects sequences with the necessary level of realism.
One of the Dorothys used during filming is now located 650 feet underground in the Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas. They also have the original film reel.
Many of the news reports spread throughout the movie are actual weathermen from Oklahoma news stations, including Gary England, chief meteorologist at KWTV in Oklahoma City, and Rick Mitchell, chief meteorologist at KOCO in Oklahoma City. The "1969" footage of Gary England giving the televised tornado warning to Jo's family is actual archived footage of him issuing a tornado warning; however, Gary England did not join KWTV until 1972.
Was shot as an R rated film that featured profanity and grislier wound details. The film was edited down to a PG-13 in post-production which caused additional scenes with Cary Elwes and Philip Seymour Hoffman to be left on the cutting room floor due to content alone. Other profanities throughout the film were muted or replaced to secure the PG-13 rating.
In an early scene when Philip Seymour Hoffman is sitting on a lawn chair, he lifts his leg in the air while laughing. His genitals were fully visible for a split second. It was edited out of the DVD and VHS releases, but it was leaked from VHS screeners sent to industry professionals.
Both Joss Whedon and Steven Zaillian were brought in as script doctors at a fee of $100,000 a week.
The project was a co-production between Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures. That is why the drive-in marquee shows Psycho (1960) a Universal release and The Shining (1980), a Warner Bros. release.
Van Halen wrote two original songs for Twister; "Humans Being" and the instrumental guitar/piano duet "Respect The Wind", which plays over the end credits. Van Halen were originally contracted to write five original songs for the movie but this never came to be, as Alex Van Halen and Eddie Van Halen were both suffering from independent injuries and vocalist Sammy Hagar wanted to spend time with his family in Hawaii. Hagar failed to show up on the day he reportedly promised to join the band in studio to finish the songs, which caused the band to come to blows that led to Hagar's departure from Van Halen. "Humans Being" was merged with an unfinished ballad titled "Between Us Two", and "Respect The Wind" was written and recorded less than 24 hours before their contracted deadline with Warner Bros was to end.
The base camp (where the crew trucks and equipment are staged) for the end sequence was at a pig farm down the road from the well-house. Every morning the cast and crew were greeted by the smell of a 2-acre pig-waste holding pond in the middle of all the trucks.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2001 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.
One of the reasons Jan de Bont signed on to direct the film was that, given the rapid rise of CGI in the 1990s, he saw this as perhaps the last opportunity to direct a large-scale film with practical effects. Time proved that he was right, after the CGI's fast evolution in later years caused the almost total abandon to make large-scale movies with practical effects.
Director Jan de Bont didn't want to work with famous actors because of their notoriously demanding nature and diva behavior, instead going for lesser known actors in order to not draw away the attention from the tornadoes. He said that the hardest actor to cast was Helen Hunt: de Bont really wanted her to play the lead because he loved her strong persona and ability to boss people around, which reminded him of a whirlwind. However, the studio was puzzled over de Bont's choice, since Hunt was only known for doing TV sitcoms at the time, so they pressured him into holding additional auditions. De Bont said that these auditions were really embarrassing, since he had to tell every actress who turned up that he had already set his mind on Hunt, and afterwards inform the studio that he was unable to find a more suitable actress.
Winds on the plains in Oklahoma change and gust regularly, and wind speeds are typically higher than much of the rest of the country. Several characters are shown deeply contemplative about or reacting to a relatively gentle wind picking up outside (e.g., Aunt Meg before the Wakita tornado). While this makes for suspenseful storytelling, people in this region would be much more likely to notice the wind stopping as a sign that a storm is fast approaching.
The opening scene featuring Jo as a child wasn't in the film's original cut. Instead, a nightmare sequence was shot with adult Jo flashing back several times to her traumatic childhood experiences, as well as multiple moments where Jo sees hallucinations of her dead father. One such scene would have shown Jo being visited by her dad, who gives her the strength and motivation to take on the final tornado. These scenes were cut because De Bont felt they "took away" from the overall feel of the movie. However, he also felt the film was missing something when these scenes were removed, so he compensated by going back through re-shoots and filming a new opening scene that showed the entire event in full sequence. Only one of the hallucinations remains in the final cut, when Jo sees her family with the wreckage in Wakita.
Filming began on May 1, 1995 and ended on July 22, 1995 after 2 months, 11 weeks or 82 days of filming.
In her introductory scene Helen Hunt clearly says the f word but you don't hear it. This was edited out for home video, presumably to secure a more family friendly rating.
Cary Elwes's role as written was cut back significantly in the editing room.
"It sucks" was originally going to be used as one of the taglines for the film, but the producers felt that it worked too much to the advantage of disappointed audiences and critics.
The kinetic wind-powered sculptures in aunt Meg's garden are made by sculptor Evan Lewis.
(at 55:21) at the car-chase, there's a naked man in the cornfield at background, who surprisingly stands up to look what's going on there.
(at around 1h 30 mins) The name on the tanker truck that pushes Bill's pickup off of the tree is "Benthic Petroleum" which is the same oil company that Ed Harris' crew works for in The Abyss (1989). Ed Harris majored in theater at the University of Oklahoma where the National Severe Storms Laboratory is located.
The unique siren sound made by Dorothy is achieved by combining the sounds created by a standard police, fire, ambulance siren control head. These control heads have modes called yelp, siren, and phaser. This same sound would later be heard during the chase scene from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), with the fire truck, crane, ambulance, police cars, all chasing the Toyota Tundra. In the latter movie the sound was created accidentally. In this movie on purpose.
(at around 1h 14 mins) Lois Smith's character is reading Dante Alighieri's Inferno when the twister hits Wakita. The book also features a tornado in the second circle of Hell that punishes people ruled by Lust.
The laptops used in the film are Silicon Graphics Indy Presenter LCD screens (not real laptops) that have been modified to look like functional laptops when in fact the screen image is generated by a computer off-screen.
The reason Dustin is wearing the OU (University of Oklahoma) hat is because the producers wanted to spite OU for not letting the OU symbol be on Dorothy.
Several incidents during filming made the papers, such as an altercation where director Jan de Bont had supposedly pushed a crewmember into the mud. De Bont later explained that they were filming a particularly difficult scene, one that involved actors doing physical and dangerous performances with lots of wind and objects flying around. He suddenly noticed a crew member walking towards the front of the camera, so he dashed towards the man and pulled him away just in time to save the shot. There were also reports of friction between de Bont and the original director of photography (DoP), veteran Don Burgess, which led to Burgess and 20 other disgruntled crewmembers walking out a few weeks into shooting. De Bont (who is a former DoP) had to operate the camera himself until Burgess was replaced by Jack N. Green.
The Dodge Ram used in the film was part of deal with Warner Bros and Chrysler. The deal was originally sold to Ford, who began testing with the Ranger, when Chrysler was instead sold the deal. Chrysler also allowed the use of several Dodge Grand Caravan's which are used by Jonas's gang, as well as Jo's 1982 Jeep Honcho.
Jonas is vilified for selling out to 'corporate sponsors', which is ironic considering Pepsi's very prominent product placement. When the team is making the 'wings' for the sensors, all of the cans are Pepsi products. In almost all the shots showing the 'Doppler', the colors spiral inward and morph into the Pepsi symbol.
Mira Sorvino was considered to play Melissa Reeves, Bill's uptight fiancee. However, Sorvino didn't want to dye her hair brown for the part, so Jami Gertz was cast instead.
The film's flashback scene shows a young Jo having the same breed of dog as Dorothy's Toto in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Although Amblin Entertainment has collaborated with both Warner Bros. Pictures and Universal Pictures on many occasions (Amblin co-founder Steven Spielberg directed films for both studios), as of 2021, this film marks the only time Amblin collaborated with both studios on the same film.
Jan de Bont is a fan of singer Tori Amos, and decided early on he wanted to include some of her music in the film. Oddly enough, Amos filmed a music video, inspired in The Wizard of Oz (1939), which includes a twister: Tori Amos: Cornflake Girl - UK Version (1994).
Twister floated around the industry for several years and was seen as a very sought-after project before moving into production. Very early on in development, before Jan de Bont was hired, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton, John Carpenter, James Cameron, and John Badham, were considered, approached, or attached to direct the film at various points in pre-production. Spielberg served as an executive producer.
Garth Brooks, Mark Cuban and Chris Farley turned down the role of Dustin Davis.
Laura Dern and Tom Hanks were considered for the roles of Dr. Jo and Bill Harding.
The roadside cafe featured early in the film is called the "Blue Tulip", which is the name of Jan de Bont's production company.
At the beginning of the movie (at around 7 mins) there is a little and apparently non-important discussion between Rabbit (Alan Ruck) and Allan (Sean Whalen) about "roll the maps" instead fold the maps. In a time (mid 90s) where GPS and Internet were still in its infancy and not in common use, dependence in paper maps was crucial for getting by to any place. Fold and unfold a map repeatedly for a long time causes cracks and fissures in the paper, making that the map useless.
Jan de Bont, a vegetarian, has stated that he hated filming the scene at Aunt Meg's house when everyone is eating steak and eggs.
(at around 59 mins) Beltzer shouts, "That's no moon, it's a space station!" This is a reference to Obi-Wan Kenobi's line when he, Luke, Han, and Chewbacca first discover the Death Star in Star Wars (1977). Later, he uses the term "cone of silence". This is a reference to the spoof spy series Get Smart (1965) in which the participants use a device to keep others from hearing a conversation and does the same to the participants.
The red combine used in the film is now in Watrous, Saskatchewan, Canada
Two of the character's names are Stanley and Kubrick, after legendary director Stanley Kubrick.
The production went through countless cans of hairspray to keep the actors' hair modeled in shots without tornadoes.
Christopher McDonald was considered for the role of Dr. Jonas Miller, but was already committed to Happy Gilmore (1996) where he coincidentally plays a similar arrogant, smug villain. Alec Baldwin, Peter Greene, and Hugh Laurie were also considered.
The 21 August 1995 draft of the screenplay credits Joss Whedon and Jeff Nathanson as writers. Neither are credited in the final film.
Jami Gertz's first acting role was a school production of The Wizard of Oz, in which she played Dorothy.
Early in the film during a storm chase, the chasers quote dialog from Repo Man (1984) to each other over the radio.
Recent advances are allowing us to see inside tornadoes to some degree. Whereas in the film the interior view is somewhat clear, like the eye of a hurricane, it has been discovered that large tornadoes like the one in the closing scenes can have multiple funnels spinning inside the main vortex.
The first music video played by Dustin in the TV of his van is Eric Clapton "Motherless Child". Later, he played Deep Purple "Child in Time".
(at around 25 mins) When Jo and Billy's team are chasing a tornado in the cars, they play some songs: Dustin plays "Child in Time" of Deep Purple in a TV; Preacher hears "William Tell Overture" on the radio car; and Beltzer and Haynes sing "Oklahoma".
At 27:22 in Bill Paxton looks right at the camera for a split second.
(at around 41 mins) It can be seen a funnel cloud on the left side of the bridge and another funnel cloud to the right of the bridge. Neither Jo nor Bill acknowledge that there are two funnel clouds until the one on the left splits off seconds later into two then Bill says, "Ok we got sisters."
In the Spanish dub, Billy's nickname "The Extreme" was translated as "El Máximo" (The Maximum).
The drive in movie before the tornado tears it down is The Shining starring Jack Nicholson. Helen Hunt would star opposite and win an Oscar with Nicholson the following year in As Good As It Gets.
All of the computers in the movie are Silicon Graphics workstations. This highly unlikely (albeit not impossible), especially for the main characters' unsponsored team, since the average price for a Silicon Graphics workstation was around $40,000 at the time. ($73,296 in 2022 money, adjusted for inflation). Furthermore, the Silicon Graphics laptop did not exist in reality. It was created specifically for the movie by Silicon Graphics as a prop, and was not actually a functioning computer. Needless to say, Silicon Graphics was a sponsor of this movie.
Jami Gertz's role as Melissa Reeves doubles not only as a love interest for Paxton's character, but also as vessel for exposition. With her character being the only one with no knowledge of tornados or meteorology exposition is "disguised" as her simply being curious while feeding the audience important information about the science behind tornados.
The name "Dorothy" and the picture on the side of the device are an homage to Judy Garland in her role of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), who is famously sucked up by a huge tornado.
Early on Bill (Bill Paxton) calls Jonas a "Nightcrawler". Paxton would go to co-star with Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler (2014), though in this film the remark refers to Jonas's competence as a stormchaser, where in Nightcrawler it means an independent or stringer cameraperson capturing bloody footage for news stations.
Despite the fact that this was filmed in Panavision (anamorphic), "Lenses and Panaflex Camera by Panavision" is listed in the end credits.
The two films shown at the drive-in (Psycho and The Shining) are both referenced in Steven Spielberg's and Michael Crichton's previous team-up, Jurassic Park. Nedry's death scene ends with the camera focusing on his stolen embryos, just like Psycho focuses on the stolen money. The raptors-in-the-kitchen scene references The Shining with the way the children outwit the animals.
Ford had lobbied hard to have this movie feature the 1997 F-150. However they lost out to Dodge.
An important subplot in the movie is the rivalry between Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jonas (Cary Elwes): Bill had the original idea for the design of Dorothy machine (a tank full of little plastic bubbles with chips inside to measure and analyze tornadoes), but Jonas was hired for a great company and he did make a copy of it, claiming it as his own and naming Dot to "his" machine. Their confrontation exposes two different points of view: while Bill tries to make pure science and investigation to study nature and save lives, Jonas makes science and investigation just for fame and money, no matter if someone dies in the process, and looking for put end to fieldwork for making investigation only from a lab.
Debut of Melanie Hoopes, Sharonlyn Morrow, Jennifer L. Hamilton, April Warren, Anneke de Bont. In addition, this is the only movie for Morrow, Hamilton and De Bont (Jan de Bont's daughter, director of the movie). Oddly enough, almost all Warren roles have been uncredited in more of 20 years of carrier.
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(at around 1h 40 mins) At the end of the movie Bill remarks that the tornado didn't take the house. In fact, it was originally supposed to. The Hardin County, Iowa, Historical Society and many citizens objected to the house being blown up so it was spared. The area is now a tourist attraction as the rubble from the barn and fences is still there exactly as it was in the movie.
The set-piece where the F5 tornado begins hurling farm machinery into Jo and Bill's path was achieved by suspending farming equipment made out of special lightweight aluminium, suspended from military helicopters and then releasing them on cue. The red pickup was then driven through the falling wreckage, allegedly with director Jan de Bont operating the point of view camera from the passenger seat. CGI was used to add debris including the steel wheel that bounces in front of the camera as he did not want to put his crew at risk. The collision of the truck's window with one of the parts of the harvester is real and was not intended, hence the continuity error where it appears intact in the following shots.
(at around 50 mins) During Aunt Meg's lunch, Bill explains to Melissa that a tornado's destructive force is measured with Fujita's Scale. It was named after Ted Fujita, who in 1971 in collaboration with Allan Pearson created a scale to differentiate a twister according to the wind speed: -F0: 60-117 km/h or 45-72 mph (light damage). -F1: 117-181 km/h or 73-112 mph (moderate damage). -F2: 181-250 km/h or 113-157 mph (significant damage). -F3: 250-320 km/h or 158-206 mph (severe damage). -F4: 320-420 km/h or 207-260 mph (devastating damage). -F5: 420-510 km/h or 261-308 mph (incredible damage). -F6: 510-610 km/h or 309-379 mph (although the Fujita scale initially had five levels, in May 3, 1999 a tornado in Bridge Creek-Moore, Oklahoma, devastated with a force never seen before. It was the only "F6" in history. However, the United States National Weather Service reduced its initial report to consider it officially F5, not F6).
Despite the severity and frequency of the tornadoes in this movie, there are only three known deaths: Jo's father, Jonas, and Eddie.
Not counting the prologue set during Jo's childhood, the entire movie happens in 24 hours.
(at around 1h 35 mins) A real 120,000-pound, two-story house was rolled in front of Bill and Jo by a 50-foot-high crane.. The teddy bear that hits Bill and Jo's windshield right after they come out of the toppled house was a CG effect.
(at around 1h 14 mins) In the scene right before aunt Meg's house gets hit by the tornado, you can see a movie playing on her TV. The movie is A Star Is Born (1954), and the actress you see is Judy Garland, who plays Dorothy in the The Wizard of Oz (1939). "Dorothy" is the name of the research device the crew is trying to get sucked up by a tornado (which happens to Dorothy in Wizard of Oz as well).
There are a total of eight tornadoes in the film.
The huge oil tanker that is hurled towards Jo and Bill in the finale is mostly real. A full size tanker was mocked up and hung from a suspension rig where it could perform controlled collisions with their red pickup. Production stills of the stunt can be seen online.
(at 1:18:50) When Bill, Jo and the rest of the team head back to Wakita to save Aunt Meg, there is a brief moment where Jo looks at a family (father, mother and little girl) holding each other as they stand among the ruins of their house. They strongly resemble Jo's parents in the prologue.
(at around 50 mins) During lunch at Aunt Meg's house, Melissa asks if there are F5 tornadoes, and if anyone on the team has seen one. Ironically, she leaves Billy after the tornado at the drive-in theater, just before the final tornado of the movie. The final tornado is a F5.
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